Tuesday, 10 July 2018

A group of students living together in one property for nine months of the academic year is going to take its toll. Even if you and your housemates are the Kim and Aggie of the university, the kind of traffic that runs through a property shared by, say, five people means things like bathrooms and carpets will have seen better days once summer arrives and those tenancies come to an end.

While wear and tear is an acceptable level of decline when it comes to end of tenancy inventories and a mere 1% of tenancies end up in official disputes, 57% of those that do cite cleaning as the cause of the face-off between landlord and tenant.

Essentially, a landlord would be within their rights to expect the property to be handed over in the same condition it was presented in at the start of the agreement.

So, if you were blown away by the level of spotlessness when you moved in, that’s the standard required when you move out. Not at all easy to achieve for DIYers, so maybe it’s time to consider an end of tenancy deep clean?

If there is a note in the tenancy agreement that states your landlord can use part of your deposit for professional cleaning should the property not be acceptable on check-out, you could be faced with losing more of your money than you bargained for.

Indeed, it can be cheaper to look at bringing in the pros prior to that final check-out inventory, avoiding any admin costs associated with landlords forking out for a deep clean.

Moreover, an invoice from a professional cleaning company confirming all the work that has been carried out will carry weight should there be any kind of dispute over the standard of the property at check-out.

Finally, on a personal level, most landlords will genuinely appreciate a student tenant bringing in a professional end of tenancy cleaner and that could mean a glowing reference ahead of the next academic year’s renting.